Make Mine Macramé
Virginia DeMarce
Prologue
Magdeburg, November 1634
“Bernhard is,” Mike Stearns said, “your brother. You might want to keep your tendency to view with alarm within pretty strict limits on this one, even if it did happen on my watch.”
Wilhelm Wettin looked at him sourly.
“We were preoccupied with the League of Ostend. I admit it,” Mike offered.
“Southern Alsace,” Wettin said. “Not only the Franche Comté, which is the problem of the Isabella Clara Eugenia and the king in the Netherlands rather than the USE, but all of southern Alsace, except for Strassburg itself.”
“Not all,” Francisco Nasi interjected. “Strassburg is a USE city-state and has managed to annex a considerable rural hinterland in the midst of all the confusion. Not to mention that it was Bernhard’s pulling his cavalry back to the line south of Strassburg last spring that permitted Nils Brahe to annex the Province of the Upper Rhine for the USE.”
Duke Albrecht, who usually stayed home to run the Wettin family’s day-to-day business, so to speak, interjected, “He also had enough sense not to annex Mömpelgard—Montbéliard, as the French call it, when he took southern Alsace. That is a Württemberg exclave, you do realize? The young dukes are Gustavus Adolphus’ allies. And they are Lutheran! That’s one major potential point of contention that Bernhard had sense enough to walk away from.”
“He isn’t insane,” Philipp Sattler said. “He also left Mülhausen alone—Mulhouse, the French call it. Trying to annex a city that’s been an allied Swiss canton for over a century, even if it’s not geographically contiguous to anything else in the Swiss Confederacy, would stir up a hornet’s nest. Better just to pass it by.”
Wilhelm Wettin frowned and kept counting his youngest brother’s offenses on his fingers. “The Sundgau, formerly Austrian—Tyrolese to be more precise. The Breisgau, formerly Austrian—Tyrolese, to be more precise. Innumerable Reichsritterschaften and petty lordships. And in regard to those, he has the gall to say that he has done nothing different from what your own State of Thuringia-Franconia has been doing in Franconia.”
“Ah,” Mike said. “Actually, that last is pretty close to the truth, as far as I know.”
This did not seem to mollify Wettin at all.
Mike continued. “Also, he did leave the Basel border and has pulled his troops out of southern Swabia into the Breisgau, at least for the winter, which means that Horn can also go into winter quarters in a more favorable location than right on the northern border of Switzerland. And, as far as I know, the margrave of Baden-Durlach, as USE administrator of the proposed Province of Swabia, from the perspective of his headquarters in Augsburg, is not totally dissatisfied with the current situation.”
Wettin stopped counting off his fingers and examined his fingernails. “It is a lot to ask. I don’t make this request as the leader of the loyal opposition. We have come together to ask as his brothers. We have dealt with Bernhard all our lives, you realize.”
Duke Albrecht continued to sit quietly. Wettin, apparently, was not capable of continuing his request to the end.
Albrecht leaned forward. “Please,” he said. “We would like to have a copy of the ambassadress’ report. Frau Jackson’s report. We would like to know how she persuaded him to go away from Basel. Nobody else has ever managed to persuade Bernhard to do anything that he did not want to do.”
“By the time Diane was finished,” Mike said, “he no longer wanted to threaten Basel’s borders, at least if I understand Tony Adducci’s report correctly. It involves a map that Lee Swiger sketched, and all sorts of arrows that Diane drew on it, following lines that Archduchess Maria Anna had marked with her finger. In short, she illustrated that he is going to have enough on his plate for the time being dealing with the lands you just listed—so much on his plate that he should not be suckered into any more distractions on the right bank of the Rhine. He was convinced that he should focus on protecting his core territories, if he really wants to keep them. That wasn’t the purpose of the map, but that is how Diane used it.”
Duke Albrecht raised an eyebrow.
Mike cleared his throat. “Well, ultimately, Diane said she recognized the problem almost at once. Your brother never went to kindergarten. Therefore he never learned the lessons of Everything I Ever Really Need to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten. She’s been giving Bernhard a ‘back to the basics’ course on prudent and proper sandbox behavior, so to speak. With flannel boards, cutout figures, and everything.”
“There should be a hiatus for a few months,” Nasi said, his tone placating. “Bernhard is going to be preparing and entrenching, organizing and making plans to deal with the plague epidemic ‘scheduled’ for Swabia in the spring and summer of 1635 according to the history books.”
Stearns nodded. “He’s already hired a nurse out of Grantville. He’s got three well-recognized down-time plague doctors coming in from Franconia right about now—the Padua men that Claudia de Medici, the regent of Tyrol, loaned our administrators in Bamberg to deal with the outbreak in Kronach. I think he’s smart enough to know that a ruler is a lot better off with living subjects than dead ones.”
Wettin’s face was still sour. “ ‘Dumb’ was never one of our touchy, overambitious baby brother’s problems.”
Chapter One
Bolzen, Tyrol, January 1635
“Those progress reports from the plague physicians we sent to assist Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar last November complete the old business on the agenda.” Wilhelm Bienner, chancellor of the County of Tyrol, closed one folder.
Claudia de Medici inclined her head at the members of her inner council. “The next item on the agenda is unannounced. I wanted to avoid the premature spread of gossip.” Her steely gray eyes fixed on a couple of her advisers, but she forbore to make any additional comment. “For the remainder of the meeting, I will have present additional persons whom I have recently seen fit to add to my staff.”
She signaled to the doorman. He exited into the antechamber, returning with, obvious to anyone who looked at them closely, two up-timers and a down-timer.
“Your Grace, is this...?” The questioner’s voice dwindled away into a mumble.
“Yes,” Claudia said. “It is wise.” She looked around the table. “Does anyone else doubt that it is wise?”
If anyone else did, he found it prudent not to say so.
The regent smiled like a cat. “Gentlemen, may I present to you Don Francesco de Melon, formerly the imperial/Bavarian military commander of the fortress of Kronach in northern Franconia.” She waved.
De Melon bowed.
She waved again.
He took the designated chair.
“Also, from Grantville, in the Ring of Fire, Herr Matthäus Trelli, formerly commander of the State of Thuringia-Franconia’s military forces during the recent siege of Kronach. Prior to the Ring of Fire, he had studied the subject of Medical Lab Technology for two years at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. This study required two more years, but Herr Trelli informs me that because of financial problems, he had left the university and was working at a ‘clinic’ in the same time to earn sufficient money to complete his professional preparation. He is personally acquainted with the famous Professor Thomas Stone who is now lecturing in Padua.” The ritual of waves and chairs followed.
“And Herr Trelli’s wife, whom he married just this past month in Würzburg, the gentle-lady Frau Laura Marcella Abruzzo.” Claudia’s voice firmed. “Lady Abruzzo, before the Ring of Fire, was also a student at this same Fairmont State University in West Virginia. As you may have heard, if not believed, this ‘co-education’ was common up-time. Lady Abruzzo had completed three years of a four-year course of study in the subject of Civil Engineering Technology. We have been informed that not only nobles but also commoners educated their daughters well.”
Turning to Bienner’s clerk, who was taking minutes, she pointed. “Take a memo. Dr. Bienner is to write yet once more to both Quedlinburg and Prague, asking them about women’s colleges. I will not have Tyrol lose its preeminent economic position because it fails to modernize.”
The clerk made a note.
“As to Lady Abruzzo. Since the Ring of Fire, because this university in Fairmont, West Virginia, was not included within the Ring of Fire, she has spent two years apprenticing to the experienced partners who founded USE Steel in Saalfeld to become certified by them as a fully qualified engineer.”
At the mention of the word “steel,” several of the previously unhappy faces around the table transformed themselves. Their current expressions might be described as mollified.
“I am delighted,” the regent said, “to welcome these up-time fellow Italians as they join the administrative staff of the County of Tyrol.” She waved.
Marcie Abruzzo did not curtsey. Like the men, she bowed. Then she took her seat.
“Begin as you mean to go on,” her Grandma Kovacs always said.
* * *
“Fellow-Italians,” Matt said to de Melon. “The Trellis came from somewhere around Venice, I think, but my mom is Irish. Dad’s mom was Irish. Marcie’s dad’s family immigrated from Sicily, but her mom’s Serbian.”
Marcie Abruzzo laughed. “Talk about an exercise in résumé inflation. The archduchess certainly has the routine down pat.”
She paused. “She is an archduchess, isn’t she?”
“Her late husband,” de Melon said, “was an archduke. Her father, however, was Grand Duke of Tuscany, so by birth she is a grand duchess. Her first husband was merely a duke.”
“How do those stack up against each other—an Austrian archduke and an Italian grand duke? Is one higher than the other?”
“I am a soldier, not a diplomat. However, I think they would be about equivalent, since the families intermarry and the spouses are considered to be of equal birth.”
“How come she didn’t run through your résumé, de Melon?” Matt asked. “The one I got for you when I asked Grantville to send me something was pretty impressive.”
“I am very sorry,” Francesco de Melon said with impeccable courtesy, “but I sincerely believe that your researchers in Grantville were mistaken.” The former imperial/Bavarian military commander of the fortress of Kronach assumed an expression that indicated he felt mildly apologetic.
“Umm,” Matt Trelli, formerly de Melon’s opposite number on behalf of the State of Thuringia-Franconia during the siege of Kronach, asked, “how?”
“Part of this information they sent you...” De Melon picked up a piece of paper. “Part of this is me, I, myself, the person who is sitting here in your presence.”
Matt nodded.
“I believe, though, that most of it belongs to another person with the same name, or a similar name. More precisely, it appears to belong to two or more other persons with the same name, or similar names. One of them was a poet. The other was a count. I am flattered, of course, to have so suddenly acquired both outstanding literary abilities and a rank of high nobility. However...”
De Melon sat there, across the table from Matt. Young. Straight black hair, dark eyes. Not overweight, but a little jowly. Heavy eyebrows, prominent nose, mustache.
“Well,” Matt said. “I guess we at least have to give the folks at the National Research Center credit for trying. It’s not as if anybody in Grantville could speak or read Portuguese before the Ring of Fire. Well, Ms. DiCastro was in Grantville as an exchange teacher. She’s from South America, so maybe she could. She didn’t work for the Research Center, though, so it probably doesn’t make any difference whether she could or not. She was teaching Spanish at the high school.”
Marcie Abruzzo, so recently married to Matt that they still counted as honeymooners, asked, “Why did you ’fess up? When you realized about the mix-up, I mean?”
De Melon smiled. “Not from any outstanding amount of abstract virtue, I assure you. I just felt sure that if I kept that résumé after I accepted the regent of Tyrol’s invitation to enter her service, at some time, unavoidably, I would meet someone acquainted with one of the other men.”
* * *
“A letter from the emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,” Chancellor Bienner’s clerk said. “It just arrived.”
Claudia snatched it.
She read.
She frowned. “Ferdinand says they are considering the possibility that Vienna might offer the Archduchess Cecelia Renata as a wife for Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar, as a means of maintaining the Habsburg interests in Swabia.”
“But he’s Protestant,” Bienner protested.
“It appears,” Claudia answered, “that Leopold’s young cousins in Vienna are—how would Marcie put it?—thinking outside of the box. How would such a move affect the position of my sons? The historically Habsburg lands in Swabia do not belong to Vienna. They belong to Tyrol. Perhaps I should think outside of the box as well, before Ferdinand steals a march on me.”
* * *
“If a leak occurs before I am ready for this initiative to become public,” the regent said, “heads will roll.”
No one at the table doubted that she meant this statement in its most literal sense.
“After study of the situation and consultation with Dr. Bienner, taking into account some proposed actions on the part of Our cousins in Vienna, having within the fairly recent past taken advantage of Our commercial connections with the manufacturers of the ‘Monster’ to visit both Venice and Magdeburg, We have concluded...”
Claudia de Medici paused and stood up. She had called this meeting for the specific time in the morning when the sun would come through the windows of the conference room and shine on her titian hair. She had a talent for the dramatic.
“No, no.” She waved as all the others scrambled to push their chairs back. “Retain your seats.”
She had frequently thought that although proper protocol required that the highest-ranking person in a room sit, while all others stood respectfully unless given permission to sit, this was counterintuitive. She was tall, true, but when seated, she could not tower over anyone else. If they sat and she stood, however, she could achieve a more intimidating effect. A truly satisfactory intimidating effect.
It was definitely time for some changes in Tyrol.
“It is Our intention to extend exploratory feelers to the United States of Europe as to what terms We could obtain if We were willing to bring Tyrol, voluntarily, into it.”
“As one of its provinces?” someone asked.
She shook her head decisively. “No. As a ‘state.’ They may say that the status of the State of Thuringia-Franconia, legally, is no different from that of the other provinces, but, still, ‘state’ is a distinguishing term. There are nuances to be considered. The word has connotations tied to its history. A ‘state’ in the English language, I have learned, was not only one of the component units of the ‘United States of America,’ but also could be and was often utilized as synonymous with ‘nation.’ ”
She suddenly grinned impishly, looking a decade younger than her thirty years. “See how useful it is to have up-time advisers. Marcie had a friend at the university who majored in ‘marketing.’ First impressions are always important. ‘State’ is much better than ‘province.’ ”
“ ‘Marketing,’ ” one of her council asked dubiously. “The up-timers went to a university to learn to sell things?”
“I have been talking to young Matthäus,” someone answered. “Their merchants no longer offered traditional apprenticeships. They appear to have paid money, called endowments, to schools of higher education, where would-be young merchants were trained by academics, many of whom had never been traders themselves. The result was called an MBA. A ‘Master of Business Administration.’ ”
The sheer horror of this concept caused a gloomy silence to descend on the conference room.
“You now have heard the essence of what I am proposing. Dr. Bienner has prepared a ‘position paper’ that I want each of you to read. We will reconvene tomorrow. Keep the desirability of a direct connection between your heads and your necks firmly in mind.”
* * *
Wilhelm Bienner had discovered bullet points and the Joy of the Executive Summary.
• Both the USE and Venice are seriously interested, for good sound economic and commercial reasons, in having a land bridge between them; while air transport is a boon, it will not dominate the exchange of goods and people for some decades. Tyrol’s entrance into the USE would meet this need (see projections, Appendices I-IV);
• Maximilian of Bavaria isn’t the most stable of next door neighbors to have just at this moment (see retrospective from mid-summer 1634 to the present, Appendix V);
• At a time when Tyrol could really use a strong archbishop in Salzburg, the Holy Spirit in its wisdom has chosen to give Us Paris von Lodron. Even if his publicists represent him as being “as cautious and wise as Pericles,” what that means for Us is that he’s huddling like a turtle in its shell; he may be expected to defend the territories of the archdiocese as strongly as he can, but it is not probable that he will assist Us if Maximilian gives Tyrol problems (see further analysis, Appendix VI);
• Our cousins in Vienna are preoccupied with setting up a new administrative structure for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They cannot ignore developments in Bohemia and the Balkans; Ferdinand feels he must support the Poles if Gustavus should be imprudent enough to push his eastern campaign that far next summer (see further analysis, Appendix VII);
• If the setting up of a USE “Province of Swabia” goes through as it was proposed at the Congress of Copenhagen the previous June, Tyrol will lose many of its current possessions that are scattered all the way through Swabia to the Rhine (see copy of the relevant portion of the proceedings, attached as Appendix VIII);
• If Tyrol comes in voluntarily as a unit, We can probably negotiate much more satisfactory terms.
Essentially, that was it. With footnotes, legal references, and supplements, the position paper ran to sixty-seven closely written pages. That was not counting the appendices.
Matt Trelli read the point about Salzburg and muttered, “Three cheers for the Paraclete.”
De Melon looked at the size of it, calculated the number of clerks who must have been pulled in to make copies for each council member, wondered why the chancery had not yet invested in a Vignelli duplicating machine, and muttered, “If there isn’t a leak before the regent is ready to make this public, I will be a very surprised man.”
Marcie commented, “That capitalization of “We” and “Us” and “Our” always gets to me—really gives me the shivers.”
* * *
“I seriously believe,” de Melon told the regency council, “that you can anticipate that the leadership of the USE will respond to such a proposal reasonably. Certainly, my experience with the SoTF officials in their handling of the surrender of Kronach last autumn left me persuaded of the essential rationality of the up-timers. Their provision of assistance to the city and fortress during the plague epidemic even left me persuaded of their essential good will. This was not a conviction that came to me easily.”
“The USE is not the only party of concern,” Chancellor Bienner pointed out. “There is also Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar to consider. The Breisgau. The Sundgau. The Swabian jurisdictional claims of his, ah, new and still developing principality overlap with those of Tyrol in some localities.”
“Our aim,” the regent said, “is to retain all Tyrolese possessions in Swabia as an inheritance for Our sons. Ferdinand Karl is six. Sigmund Franz is barely four. They are not old enough to speak for themselves. We must be tenacious on their behalf.”
She stood up.
Chancellor Bienner winced. He was learning that it was not a good sign when the regent stood up when she was at the head of a table.
“As I think about it,” Claudia said, “I believe that I have urgent reasons to visit Besançon, or, at least, to visit wherever Bernhard has his working headquarters at the moment. There is often much to be gained by a face-to-face meeting of the principal parties involved, rather than leaving discussions to ambassadors and envoys.”
There was no possible disadvantage associated with this project that her advisers left unexplored. Plague. Horn’s regiments. You Name It.
“We shall go,” the regent said. “We will do it. Let the matter be arranged with Bernhard. Let the matter be arranged with the people who fly the ‘Monster.’ Let it be done.”
Chapter Two
Schwarzach, January 1635
Once Friedrich von Kanoffski arrived from Freiburg im Breisgau, where he was locum tenens, the informal but closely associated group of Bernhard’s associates who called themselves Der Kloster because of their working headquarters at the “requisitioned” Abbey of Schwarzach, was complete. Once everyone else had extended to the Bohemian their congratulations and felicitations on the safe delivery the previous month of his wife Anna Jolantha Salome, née Stump, the daughter of a Freiburg patrician, of a healthy son named Johann Balthasar, they got down to business on the general theme of “Well, what next?”
“You’re still officially in the employ of France,” Caldenbach said. “It may be the result of incredible bureaucratic inertia, but you are. In spite of everything that happened last spring, Richelieu is still sending money to Besançon.”
“Not much,” Rosen pointed out. “Not very regularly, either.”
“Insurance,” Bernhard said. “Louis XIII is very short on regiments at the moment. Richelieu will not formally break the contract as long as he can imagine even the most unlikely ‘just in case’ scenario in which he might need to call on me. In case you’re wondering, I have that directly from a plant on Mazarin’s staff. There’s no such scenario on the horizon.”
“At the moment,” Sydenham Poyntz added.
“Next.” Bernhard had little patience for meetings.
Johann Faulhaber, the engineer from Ulm who was supervising the military construction at the new national capitol in Besançon, presented a very satisfactory progress report.
Johann Ludwig von Erlach, a Swiss from Bern who was moving up very rapidly and showed every sign of becoming Bernhard’s lieutenant in general as well as lieutenant-general, had some things to say about management of the fortress at Breisach. If anyone else felt stirrings of envy when Bernhard named him as governor of the Alsatian territories as well, he didn’t say so. Erlach was a flamboyant man. Silver plate was not good enough for the general. His had to be gilded. He currently maintained three households simultaneously—one in his Swiss castle at Castelen, the second in Breisach itself, and the third in camp whenever he took to the field.
Johann Michael Moscherosch, poet and public relations man, outlined his latest campaigns with words, designed to lure a public he considered all-too-gullible into believing that their new ruler was also the cherry filling in their torte.
“I wish, though,” Moscherosch said, “that you would decide for once and all what you want to call yourself. There are only so many circumlocutions, euphemisms, and ways to dance on my tiptoes available.”
Von Rosen licked his lips. “Besançon is the capital, but the Franche Comté, the old County of Burgundy as distinct from the once-upon-a-time Duchy of Burgundy in the Netherlands, is only a county, after all. You are already a duke (not to mention that your older brothers are also dukes, with the exception of Wilhelm, who was a duke). Certainly, you will not demote yourself to become a a mere count, will you?” he asked a little anxiously.
Kanoffski laughed. “Does it bother you that there is more prestige in being employed by a duke than in being employed by a count?”
“Well,” von Rosen began. “No, I suppose not. But still...”
“When it comes to sitting around tables, conducting diplomatic negotiations,” Poyntz remarked to the ceiling, “dukes are seated well above counts and get to speak first. These things do matter, Kanoffski.”
“With the new new additions last year, Burgundy, our Burgundy, is powerful,” Caldenbach said. “Bernhard now holds more land than all of the Ernestine-line brothers together, as dukes of Saxe-Weimar, did before the Ring of Fire. He should assume an equally splendid title.”
Bernhard was feeling the first rumblings of the indigestion that was his constant companion. “I’ll give it some thought,” he said. “Move on.”
With the one exception of Moscherosch, the men who constituted “Der Kloster” were military officers, hard-bitten, experienced, and tough.
Still, it was Moscherosch who said, “Heirs.”
Bernhard raised one bushy black eyebrow.
“Heirs, Your Grace,” Moscherosch said firmly. “There is no point to all this if you do not produce heirs. Your efforts will amount to spitting into the wind.”
Kanoffski nodded. “I have a list of suitable Protestant possibilities.”
Elizabeth of the Palatinate? Maybe, but she was in the Spanish Netherlands.
“And,” Bernhard said, “she has just turned sixteen. I find that I have little appetite for becoming a father on the same day I become a husband. Rearing a child-bride strikes me as a truly tedious job.”
“Well,” Caldenbach said, “that lets out Frederik Hendrik’s daughters. They are even younger.”
“Much too young,” Moscherosch said. “Not even of childbearing age. Keep the purpose in mind. Heirs as soon as possible.”
“Marguerite de Rohan? She’s a little older. Almost eighteen, I think.”
“She’s in Brittany, on the goddamned other side of France. Plus, Henri de Rohan, for all the respect I have for the man and what he has done to advance the Huguenot cause over the years, will want to control her husband. He wouldn’t refuse me. In fact, he’s suggested the match already. I turned it down.”
“Why in heaven?”
“The duc de Rohan wants to buy a competent general for his daughter and heiress, to fight his wars now that he’s aging. I have no desire to become a puppet hanging on strings that another man is manipulating.”
“What about Christian IV’s daughters?”
Der Kloster regretfully dismissed the daughters of the Danish king as not only the products of a morganatic marriage, but apparently extremely self-willed. Poyntz brought up stories about Eddie Cantrell and Anna Cathrine that were making the rounds of European courts, to general hilarity and multiple rude and obscene comments.
Bernhard gritted his teeth. “That one, the oldest one, is the same age as Elisabeth of the Palatinate. The rest are even younger. Did you hear me? They are too young. The next of the Danish king’s daughters after Anna Cathrine is exactly half as old as I am.”
“Your Grace,” Kanoffski said politely. “Wilhelm of Hesse-Kassel is not likely to die conveniently so that you can marry Amalie Elisabeth.”
“I would,” Bernhard said. “If she weren’t already married, I would snatch Amalie right up. She’s interesting. She’s intelligent. She’s politically astute. I like her a lot.”
“She’s too old,” Caldenbach squalled. “She’s older than you are, Your Grace.”
“Only two years older,” Bernhard said mildly. Then he smiled. The smile was not mild. It was wicked. “She’s a magnificent breeder. They already have six children living in addition to the four who died. Anyone want to bet me on how many more children she will give Wilhelm? I’ll wager ten thousand USE dollars on five more. Two thousand at each birth.”
Chapter Three
Magdeburg, late January 1635
“What do you think, Ed?” Mike Stearns tipped his chair back. “I’m really glad that I caught up with you before you left. All this campaigning has left me getting up in the morning not sure whether I’ll be going north or south or east or west before the day is out.”
Ed Piazza steepled his fingers. “First, to be honest, I’m just surprised. I can’t say it’s the last thing that expected, because it wasn’t on the list. The possibility that the regent of Tyrol might do this never even crossed my mind.”
“Do you see any disadvantages?” Francisco Nasi asked.
“From the perspective of the SoTF? Hell, no. It would be great for us. But, then, again, it’s no skin off our noses to add another mainly Catholic province to the USE. Wettin and the Crown Loyalists may not be so happy, given that one of their themes is ‘narrower citizenship’ and another, slinking along under the ground with the anti-Semitic agitation, is still ‘we’re here to defend Protestantism against the forces of the anti-Christ on Earth.’ How’s Gustav reacting?”
Mike pantomimed a cat pouncing upon a bird. “I doubt that he’s ever seen a piece of real estate that he didn’t classify as a desirable acquisition. He tends to stop and think about the complications offered by the inhabitants after he’s taken that irreversible first bite. If he can acquire it without expending any of his military resources, it’s ‘Roll over, Beethoven’ or ‘Full speed ahead. Damn the torpedoes.’ ”
“There will be complications,” Nasi said. “Swabia...”
* * *
“Every time somebody shows up to talk to me about Swabia,” Mike grumbled, “I think I understand what Shakespeare said better—that bit about dying a thousand deaths before you die. Not that I would want to call myself a coward, but when it comes to thinking about the geography down in the southwest, I flinch. Clearly, my hopes at the Congress of Copenhagen were premature. To say the least.”
“My darling,” Rebecca said. “I doubt that you will ever understand how things work in the southern portions of the Germanies. You would love to have one villain—Duke Maximilian. You could fight him. Perhaps, you could even endure his having a limited number of allies. You could fight them. But, truly, outside of Bavaria, which is fairly good sized, mostly in Swabia all you will find is that you are being bitten to death by little, almost invisible, ants.”
“Up-time, we said, ‘Nibbled to death by ducks.’ Or, sometimes, by fishes. ‘Better to be snapped up by a crocodile than nibbled to death by minnows.’ It depended on the context.”
* * *
“What do you think?” Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg asked. The USE secretary of state fiddled with his pen. “Perhaps we can ask Basel to take this on.”
Frank Jackson shook his head. “Don’t listen to him, Mike. Diane is swamped with Swiss affairs, with Baden and its problems, and with the possibilities of what Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar might do next even though he doesn’t show any sign of doing it right now. Tony Adducci—young Tony—is a big help to her, but he’s just an assistant. Besides, she’s assigned him to the anti-plague preparation team. Anti-plague prevention team. The team that’s supposed to prepare to prevent the plague. Whatever the hell they’re calling it.”
Hermann fiddled some more. “Somebody needs to go to Tyrol, or else the regent needs to come to us. Face-to-face discussions. Radio is wonderful, but not for something this complex.”
“She’s been here before,” Nasi pointed out. “She flies on the Monster. But she says that she can’t, right now. Something has come up.”
“So pick someone. Send someone,” Mike said. “Have done with it.”
This time Hermann twirled his pen in a circle on his tablet. “Who?”
“Philipp Sattler,” Nasi said. “That’s one of the reasons Gustavus picked him as his personal liaison to the USE administration. He’s from Kempten, right down in the middle of that Swabian chaos.”
“If things come up that are higher than his pay grade?”
“It’s hard to get much higher than the emperor’s personal liaison, Hermann. Not unless you go yourself.”
The secretary of state gave one of his rare smiles. “I can always ask my brother Wilhelm if he’s willing for Amalie to undertake an occasional mission for the government. After all, it’s customary for women of high rank used as diplomatic negotiators. She and the regent might like one another.”
Chapter Four
Schwarzach, mid-February 1635
Schwarzach was in the Rhine river bottoms. The “hill” on which the ancient Romanesque cathedral stood might better have been described as a modest hump.
“Gee whiz,” Matt Trelli commented as he climbed out of the Monster after the more senior members of the delegation had already descended. “If they grew corn as high as an elephant’s eye around here, the top of the corn and the top of the hill would be just about even with each other.”
Marcie nodded. “It’s about as big a change from the Alps as we could have found.”
Kanoffski presented the members of Der Kloster to the regent.
De Melon presented the members of the Tyrolese delegation to the duke.
Dr. Bienner made a gracious speech and adumbrated the issues that were to be negotiated.
Bernhard’s chancellor, hauled up from his customary and ordinary duties in Besançon for the occasion, replied. Then he presented the representative from the USE embassy in Basel to the regent and the duke.
The senior delegates retired to their quarters in the episcopal residence to prepare for a diplomatic reception.
Even though Tony Adducci was five years younger than Matt, thus separated from him in the up-time by the yawning generation gap described as ‘not in high school when I was,’ they were so delighted to see one another that they started wrestling in the antechamber. Marcie made them stop.
* * *
The reception was meant to be quite preliminary to the serious negotiations. It proved to be momentous, although nobody but the principal parties noticed. More precisely, the observers didn’t notice it that same evening. In the minds of those principal parties, however, the looming issue of “the bride” was settled almost at once.
Duke Bernhard absentmindedly made etiquette-appropriate chitchat with Dr. Bienner and eyed Claudia de Medici. He expected to found a dynasty. Until tonight, his expectations in regard to what that project might involve had been rather vague. His associates of Der Kloster, volubly and vociferously, expected him to found a dynasty. They had hitched their wagons to his star; they expected due rewards, not just now, but for their children and grandchildren.
He had read the briefing papers; here, right in front of him, was a good looking titian-haired widow who in two marriages had successfully given birth to six children, five of whom were alive and flourishing, two of whom were male. She was three months older than he. Both of them were thirty. If she remarried she could—and very probably would—give birth to children for another dozen years.
Five or six children would be plenty, especially if Frau Dunn, the widow of the traitor Horton, could do things to prevent smallpox and plague, reduce fevers, rehydrate cases of infantile dysentery by using a mild saline solution...He had received numerous lectures on the reduction of childhood mortality in the last few months. He had been somewhat annoyed, wishing that the woman would pay more attention to training “medics” for his regiments. Suddenly they seemed relevant.
Why risk his undeniable need for heirs on any of the untried virgins who had been recommended to him as wives when a woman with a truly spectacular track record was standing right in front of him? Not to mention that she clearly understood politics and economics or she would not have proposed the current negotiations. Tyrol held colorable title to significant territories in Swabia, a couple of which he had already annexed. This was—always with the exception of Amalie, of course—the most interesting female that he had ever met.
Well, with the exception of the terrifying, tiny East Indian who was the USE ambassadress in Basel. “Interesting” was a very inadequate term to describe Diane Jackson. However, she was not only married, but well beyond childbearing age. Regrettable.
Not that he had met many women. He had gone from home at thirteen, when his mother died, to the university of Jena under the supervision of a strict tutor, to the army at eighteen. His only sister, born a few months after his father’s death, had died at the age of three. He barely remembered her. Aside from Aunt Anna Sofie, the intelligent, strong-willed widow of Count Ludwig Guenther’s older brother in Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, who was childless, committed to educational reform and social welfare, and Amalie, he had almost never sat down and had a conversation with a female. His recent encounters with Frau Jackson in Basel excepted. Mentally, he shrugged. Women had been in short supply in his life. There had been passing encounters, of course, but he had never kept a mistress. He had no bastards that he knew of.
Everyone told him that the regent of Tyrol was strong-willed and intelligent. Why would a busy man want to bother with any other kind? Bernhard was not averse to strong-willed, intelligent women. Particularly red-haired ones. He squelched that thought firmly and returned his mind to his conversation with Philipp Sattler, who had somehow taken Dr. Bienner’s place while his mind was wandering.
* * *
Claudia, standing on the other side of the room and conversing politely with the abbot of Schwarzach and the mayor of the town, eyed Duke Bernhard. He was a man who was not an ex-cardinal. How refreshing. Considering that her father had been an ex-cardinal, her second husband had been an ex-cardinal, and now poor Leopold’s cousin Maria Anna had married another ex-cardinal, she could only consider a man who was neither an ex-cardinal nor one of her subordinates to be an interesting variation in the category “male human being.” It would be interesting to have a man in her life whose official portrait did not depict him in a cassock. She mentally dismissed all consideration of her first husband, the obnoxious duke of Urbino to whom she had been married off when he was fifteen and she was sixteen. Horrible boy. The nicest thing that Federigo Ubaldo della Rovere had ever done for her was die. Not that she was sufficiently deluded or self-centered to believe that the assassins who murdered him had done it to make her life easier, but, still, she made it a point to remember them in her prayers. Leopold had been much nicer, but he had also been nearly twenty years her senior.
Duke Bernhard looked fairly healthy. Athletic. Superb horseman. The briefing papers said something about chronic indigestion, but he had enough sense that he had hired an up-time nurse.
He had already demonstrated that he was one of the best generals of the age. He clearly had ambition. She would not have had any reason to initiate these negotiations if he didn’t. Perhaps, with encouragement, he would help her pry her daughter from her first marriage out of the clutches of her grandparents. Letters from Italy indicated that Vittoria, now almost thirteen, was...not pretty. That, alas, she bore an unfortunate physical resemblance to her late father, the unlamented duke of Urbino. Under the circumstances, she would need her mother’s guidance if she were to achieve a happy future.
She had the absolutely irrational thought that Duke Bernhard was taller than she. How unusual. How...irrelevant. She squelched the thought firmly and returned her attention to making social conversation with the local worthies.
* * *
Five days later, the negotiations came to a satisfactory conclusion in the form of a preliminary prenuptial settlement. The details remained to be worked out, of course. Still, it would be a match firmly based on substantial mutual advantages, not to mention a shared appreciation of the value of real estate.
True, Bernhard was Lutheran, while Claudia was Catholic. Still, as she pointed out, the Vienna Habsburgs could scarcely complain, considering that they had been approaching the point of offering Cecelia Renata as an option. Given the religious situation in the lands they would be governing—in a real sense, the disparity of cult might even be counted as an advantage. As for the children, they would simply follow the normal arrangement—the girls would be baptized in her faith and the boys in his. That made no problems for Tyrol—Claudia’s children by Leopold were the heirs there.
* * *
“Your Grace,” Matt Trelli said. “Marcie and I really think that it would be a good idea for you to leave us—well, me, at least—here in Swabia. From what Tony Adducci says, the main thrust of the plague will come here in the southwest, not in Tyrol. We just—well, after Kronach and everything, I just feel like I need to be part of the prevention team that the Swiss and Duke Bernhard are putting together.”
The regent looked at him. “You work for me and you will return in accordance with your employment contract. You signed it voluntarily.”
Matt backed out of the room.
De Melon hurried after him. “Don’t do anything rash. She intends to place you as the head organizer of the plague fighters in Tyrol. This is something I have heard. It is not unimportant there. Given the heavy, constant, overland commercial traffic, it will be a challenge to maintain the quarantine without damaging the economy.”
“Matt, listen to me,” Marcie said that evening. “Okay, I get it. She didn’t explain her reasons. That’s sort of how people who were born to run things work. They don’t know that they have to explain. Actually, they don’t have to explain. They might get more cooperation if they did, but—honestly, Matt. They’re just not up-timers. You can’t expect a down-time aristocrat to run her bailiwick the same way Steve Salatto managed things in Bamberg. Anyway—think of it as sort of like being in the army. You couldn’t have backed out of that, either, just because you didn’t like some order Cliff Priest gave you.”
Chapter Five
Besançon, late February 1635
The air was crisp. The sky was blue. The Doubs river wended its twisty way below the city. Bernhard looked down from the site of his future, still incomplete citadel. It was here, above the imperial city itself, which was now his capital city—his—not inside the medieval walls, that he would assume his new title. His residence was in the Palais Granvelle below. He had requisitioned it. It was a gorgeous palace, much better than anything the Wettins had owned in Weimar. The Granvelle family had gone bankrupt long since, in any case.
Most of his garrison officers were quartered across the river, in the Quartier Battant, below the Griffon bastion, in the Champagney mansion, which Nicholas Perrot de Granvelle had built for his widowed mother as her dower seat. Fleetingly, he thought about the latest projected cost estimates that Faulhaber had provided for his new citadel and wondered if constructing the luxurious mansions had contributed to the Granvelle bankruptcy.
Besançon was not just defensible. It was beautiful. Residing here would be a pleasure. There were worse reasons for choosing the site of a national capital.
Bernhard glanced around, thoroughly enjoying the pageantry. Even a general could take a day off, now and then.
* * *
“Grand Duke of the County of Burgundy?” Kanoffski said to Poyntz. “Now, that’s a truly gemlike combination of words.”
“Why not, if it makes him happy? I understand that he set a lot of genealogists to work. It appears that he is legitimately descended from someone named Jean de Nevers who was count of this region a couple of hundred years ago.”
“Ultimately,” Kanoffski answered, “we all descend from Adam. How many other people now alive descend from this Jean de Nevers?”
“Dozens, if not hundreds. What difference does it make? None of the rest of them have a garrison in Besançon.”
“None of them are marrying a Tuscan grand duchess, either. Grand Duchess and Regent of the County of Tyrol. What odds will you give me that he picked it because he wanted to bring a title at least equal to hers into this marriage?”
“I’m putting my money on saying he picked it because it’s more grandiose than his brothers’ titles. A thousand USE dollars, if we can find some actual written evidence of what went into his decision, one way or the other, of course.”
* * *
“The time has come,” Bernhard said that evening. “Considering that one of my brothers is now the prime-minister elect of the USE and another is still Gustavus’ regent in the Upper Palatinate, it seems a propitious moment to see if I can pry an apology out of the old goat and get him to recognize my title and my conquests.”
“Apology? From the emperor?”
“I hear rumors that he apologized to John Hepburn, nearly two years ago. Shrewd move. The encyclopedias say that in the other world, Hepburn was so insulted by what Gustavus said about his Catholic faith that he switched over to the French also. In this world, though, he’s garrisoning Ulm for the USE. If Hepburn can get an apology, then so can I.”
Kanoffski wrote “apology” on the list he was making.
“If I am to concentrate on the challenges coming at me here in the southwest for the time being, which I think that I must, I need a, a modus vivendi with the USE.” Bernhard raised a bushy, nearly black eyebrow. “Not that I intend to let Gustavus guess that I need it. The whole matter must be presented as if I were doing him a favor.”
Kanoffski nodded and wrote modus vivendi on his list.
“I want de Melon present when we’re working out our offer, since Claudia left him behind to work out the details of our own agreement. I want that finalized—signed, sealed, and delivered—before I show my hand to Magdeburg.
“Then, I think, we need to talk to Sattler again. See if you can get him down here.”
Schwarzach, March 1635
“I can’t see that the assassinations in Grantville will have any direct impact on our concerns,” Bernhard said. “The up-timers I hired were very upset about the deaths, though. They requested permission to hold a memorial service. The chancellor radioed me for approval. I told him to go ahead, and make it a good one. Claudia’s up-time hires are all Catholic—not just Trelli and Abruzzo, whom she brought to Schwarzach, but all the rest—so they did a requiem mass in Bolzen with Urban VIII’s dispensation, but none of mine are Catholics. Still, I have to say that the Papists know how to put on a good show, so I got her to radio to the ‘Cardinal Protector’ in Magdeburg and obtain permission for the chancellor to roust them out in Besançon. The city got into the spirit of things. They produced chants, a procession, cloth of gold vestments, and waving banners for those two old Presbyterians.”
Poyntz snorted.
Moscherosch nodded. “Excellent publicity.”
“Next.”
“Brahe, and the SoTF forces from Fulda, are chasing through the Province of Upper Rhine, in pursuit of Butler, Devereux, Geraldin, McDonnell, and their dragoons. Ferdinand of Bavaria, the archbishop of Cologne, ran out of funds to pay them. Duke Maximilian has hired them for Bavaria, to replace Werth and von Mercy. They have to get across Swabia to reach Bavaria.”
The bushy eyebrow went up higher than usual. “So?”
“Horn has suggested coordination. He doesn’t want to see them reach Max. Neither, I presume, do we.”
“We don’t. Send Raudegen to Horn, with powers of attorney to act on my behalf. Make sure that the powers-that-be in Magdeburg are aware that sweetness and light are overcoming the powers of darkness in this matter.”
Von Rosen smirked.
* * *
“Tyrol insists that the Vorarlberg and other Habsburg possessions of Vorderösterreich are not negotiable. Additionally, at Grand Duke Bernhard’s death, if he and Claudia de Medici do not leave mutual heirs of their bodies, male or female, the Sundgau and Breisgau, now in possession of the County of Burgundy, will revert to her sons by the late Leopold von Habsburg, archduke of Austria and count of Tyrol.”
De Melon’s voice was calm, but insistent.
“Agreed.”
De Melon looked surprised.
Bernhard shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the point of trying to hold on to the lands I have gained if I don’t leave children? Wilhelm’s a commoner now. He has three healthy sons and Eleonore is pregnant again, but he has declared that even though she has chosen to keep her birth title, their children will take his rank and be commoners also. Little Wettins. The up-time encyclopedia says that Albrecht’s marriage in the other world remained childless; he went ahead and married Dorothea in spite of that. Ernst will inherit much of Saxe-Altenburg’s property when he marries little Elisabeth Sofie. If they go overboard and have eighteen offspring in this world, as they did in the other, I can only say that they will deserve to have to find a way support that many children themselves.”
“What about a sweetener?” de Melon suggested. “Throw in the agreement of both parties that if the two of you leave no surviving children, aside from what reverts to Tyrol and will thus be an integral part of a USE state anyway, the County of Burgundy as a single entity will become a USE province.”
Bernhard raised that eyebrow.
De Melon spread his hands wide. “Hey, it was just a suggestion.”
“It’s a damned good one,” Kanoffski said. “Carrots with your sticks, Bernhard. We’ll all be dead by the time it might happen. Offer Gustavus some carrots.”
Magdeburg, late March 1635
“Modus vivendi,” Mike Stearns marveled. “Four months ago, who’d’a thunk it?”
Wilhelm Wettin just shook his head. “Not I.”
“It’s a genuine offer,” Sattler said. “I sat in on almost all of the discussions, as did de Melon. Including their reiteration of the point about carrots.”
Frank Jackson snorted. “Right now, Gustavus is simply slavering at the thought of carrot stew.”
“Is there any point,” Hermann of Hesse-Rotenburg asked, “in mentioning to the emperor just how remote the possibility is that the County of Burgundy would ever revert to the USE? Claudia de Medici has an established reputation for fecundity. Bernhard’s parents produced eleven sons.”
Sattler shook his head. “Not, I think, when the emperor’s succession is entirely dependent upon one rather small girl, with no prospect for more heirs.”
“So.” Mike looked at Wettin. “Your brother, your call. You’re the incoming prime minister. Rebecca insists that I say this. If you absolutely can’t live with this proposal that Bernhard has made, for whatever punctilious points of honor that seem to be so important down-time, tell me now.”
Wettin put his hand flat on the table. “Follow it up.”
“All right, then. Sattler, you and de Melon go back to get this finalized. Stop by Bolzen and get the Tyrol proposal finalized, too. TEA has put the Monster at your disposal. Not as an act of charity, I regret to say. I hope the budget office is really into heavy short-term investment for the prospect of long-term solid gains.”
Bolzen, March 1635
“If We do not even try for more,” the regent said, “then We certainly will not receive it. We have not observed that the USE is in the practice of distributing bonuses or free gifts. Moreover, if one perceives the matter properly, it could almost be said that We deserve this.”
Even Dr. Bienner looked skeptical.
The regent persisted. She was nothing if not tenacious.
“There is no precedent for this in the organization of the USE provinces,” Sattler protested.
“Make one.”
“There is no provision for this in the USE constitution.”
“Amend it.”
“I am far from certain that Prime Minister Stearns will, under any circumstances, consent to the admission of a state which has a hereditary governor’s office, settled on your children and the heirs of their bodies, independently of whether or not titles of nobility should at some future date be abolished.”
“Who runs the USE? The prime minister or the emperor?”
Sattler didn’t feel like pushing the point just then. He was fully aware that in the view of Gustavus Adolphus, his desk was the one that held the sign that proclaimed “The buck stops here.” He was equally aware that Stearns was not fully with that program.
He was tired of starting to think in up-time terms and phrases.
Overall, he would find it a relief when Wettin took office in June.
* * *
“The threat of a plague epidemic has weakened the governments of many of the smaller entities along Swabia’s border with Bavaria. We fear that Duke Maximilian might come creeping in. We have already extended Tyrol’s protection to Irsee, to Ottobeuren, to Füssen, to Mindelheim, to Roggenburg. We would have been happy to do the same for the prince-bishopric of Augsburg, but Margrave Georg Friedrich of Baden forestalled Us by doing the same first.”
Claudia paused, a dissatisfied expression on her face. She hadn’t thought that the old man was still capable of carrying out a preemptive strike.
“Having thus sheltered them from foreign dangers, We feel it is only reasonable that they be incorporated into the new ‘state’ of Tyrol rather than into the Province of Swabia that was proposed in June 1634 at the Congress of Copenhagen.”
Philipp Sattler, on behalf of the USE, somehow did not see the matter the same way. He particularly did not see it the same way when she offered to extend Tyrol’s “benevolent protection” to his home town of Kempten.
Sometimes, even Claudia de Medici did not get everything she wanted.
“God be thanked,” Matt Trelli said to Marcie in the privacy of their rooms. “I didn’t go to all those little abbeys and manors and things to snitch them up for Tyrol. She told me that I was going to organize the local authorities to be in a better position to cope if plague passed the quarantine lines. I don’t want to go down in history as a lackey of the imperialist forces. The damned woman’s a shark.”
Eventually, however, Sattler completed the commission with which he had left Magdeburg. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Tyrol and Burgundy, both. He had even managed to sneak a few protective provisions into the document establishing a new Tyrolese regency council for Claudia’s sons.
“So far, so good,” he said to de Melon as he packed his briefcase for the return to Magdeburg. “But if you ask me, she’ll be back. This won’t be the end of it. Not tomorrow and not next year, but that woman could play the starring role in some story, perhaps one of these ‘movies,’ that Herr Piazza was telling me about. “The Tomato That Ate Cleveland,” I believe was the title. I am not certain why Herr Piazza refers to the regent of Tyrol as a tomato.”
Epilogue
Some Months Later
Rebecca and Amalie Elisabeth contemplated the newest map of the area that would have become a nice neat USE Province of Swabia if real life had not intervened.
“It looks like knotted fringe,” Amalie said. “Down at the bottom of the map, all the way from the Rhine to the Bavarian border, like a table runner hanging over the edge.”
Rebecca shook her head. “No. I think it’s more like up-time macramé. I saw some in Donna Bates’ house—the woman whose daughter has married Prince Vladimir—back the first year or so after the Ring of Fire, when I was living in Grantville. The maker starts with a lot of strings fastened to a dowel or rod. She brings them down and knots them, over and over, to make a pretty design.”
She shook her head again. “Poor Michael.”